The OCP Doctrine: Privatizing Police Surveillance in Palm Bay
The short version: Thomas Gaume's "OCP Doctrine" video nails the real scandal: Palm Bay's license plate readers are owned, run, and gatekept by a private vendor, not the police.
Our Take
Thomas Gaume's RoboCop framing is more than a cute gimmick — it's an accurate diagnosis. When a company like Flock Safety installs the cameras, hosts the data, writes the retention policy, and controls who gets access, your local PD isn't really running the surveillance program anymore. It's renting access to one. That distinction matters because accountability structures built for government conduct — public records requests, local oversight hearings, use-of-force review boards — don't cleanly apply to a vendor's black-box software and its ever-shifting terms of service.
Palm Bay is just one node in a nationwide network of these corporate-owned reader grids, and the pattern repeats in thousands of towns: a private company sells convenience and "officer safety," city council approves it with little scrutiny, and suddenly every plate that passes through town is logged, timestamped, and shared across a data-sharing web most residents never agreed to and can't opt out of. The sci-fi warning Gaume invokes isn't really about robots — it's about outsourcing the state's coercive power to a shareholder-driven entity that answers to investors before it answers to the public.
If you want to see whether this is already happening on your block, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back on a city contract near you, our take-action page has the tools to start.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Thomas Gaume, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.